Astronauts take fifth spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope
News story originally written on February 18, 1997

Astronauts Mark Lee and Steve Smith of the space shuttle Discovery completed
their fifth and last spacewalk in the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. The
spacewalk lasted 5 hours, 17 minutes. Now that the spacewalks are complete, the
next step is to redeploy the telescope back into its initial orbit. The Hubble
Space Telescope was initially placed into Discovery's payload bay so that
repairs could be made.

The Space Shuttle Discovery mission began with liftoff on February 11, 1997, at
3:55 am. The ten-day mission consists of making significant repairs and
improvements to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These repairs are expected to
improve the science capabilities of the HST.

Two old instruments are to be replaced. The instruments being removed include
the Goddard High Resolution Spectrometer and the Faint Object Spectrograph.
Their replacements will be the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Near
Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer.

HST will also receive upgrades to its Fine Guidance Sensor and its data
recorder. The Fine Guidance Sensor is an optical device that provides pointing
information for the HST. The current data recorder which consists of
reel-to-reel tape will be replaced by a Solid State recorder which holds ten
times as much information. In addition, one of Hubble's four Reaction Wheel
Assemblies (RWA) will be replaced. The RWA is a major component of Hubble's
positioning system.

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